


one coffee, please, black as my soul

by syllogismos



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: ...but no Porn Porn, Cannibalism-Free, Coffee, Creepy Fluff, Food Porn, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-11
Updated: 2013-05-11
Packaged: 2017-12-11 12:10:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/798617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/syllogismos/pseuds/syllogismos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It becomes habit alarmingly quickly, Will turning up at Hannibal's for his morning coffee. Sunday is the first routine fixture, along with an occasional weekday here and there, but then occasional swells to frequent, and frequent blooms into habit, three or four weekdays of five.</p>
            </blockquote>





	one coffee, please, black as my soul

**Author's Note:**

> Toeing the pre-slash/slash line a bit here, I think. Probably open to interpretation.
> 
> No cannibalism, unless Hannibal is capable of making caviar and donuts out of people, which seems...a tall order.
> 
> I am a coffee ~~snob~~ nerd, and this fic is entirely inspired by the gorgeous [$750 vacuum-brew coffee apparatus](http://royalcoffeemaker.com.previewc40.carrierzone.com/newstore/classic-palladium/vacuum-coffeemaker-classic-palladium/) Hannibal uses in "Coquilles." The end notes have the details of the equipment I describe in this fic, in case anyone is curious or inspired to go shopping.
> 
> Thanks, as always, to #antidiogenes.

It becomes habit alarmingly quickly, Will turning up at Hannibal’s for his morning coffee. Hannibal becomes Will’s personal Starbucks, only better: smoother, darker, suaver, more sophisticated in a way that’s about purity and simplicity instead of about trivial details of presentation or exotic ingredients. Not that Hannibal’s cooking doesn’t involve exotic ingredients—oh, it _does_ —but his coffee doesn’t. His coffee is coffee beans, ground directly prior to preparation, and water, just off the boil; sometimes sugar, sometimes cream.

The first time was panic over sleepwalking and prefaced with an apology that was not only shrugged off but sincerely overridden with an open invitation and a declaration of friendship.

And then there’s an invitation for breakfast the following Sunday. That isn’t only coffee, of course, but two coffee courses partner two of the three breakfast courses. First there’s poached eggs on thinly-sliced Old World German-style rye smeared with beluga caviar and accompanied by an espresso served in a double-walled glass cup that gives Hannibal the opportunity to expound on the layers and features of a perfect espresso, how the crema should be a rich caramel brown and foamy, not light and golden or burnt toast colored. Following the poached eggs on toast is a palate-cleansing grapefruit and mint salad, and the final course is freshly fried miniature apple cider donuts rolled in a mixture of imported caster sugar (finer than granulated, coarser than confectioner’s) and Vietnamese cinnamon. These are served with a another cup of coffee from Hannibal’s impressive palladium-and-glass contraption, only this time Will is treated to a demonstration and explanation of the vacuum-driven brew process before he’s treated to the cup itself, dark and smooth and only lightly sweetened.

This second serving of coffee seems to flow directly to the base of Will’s skull, pooling there, warm, and overwhelming his basic functions: his breath comes faster, his head swims, his fingers tingle. He watches as if through fog as Hannibal finishes his own coffee and pushes his chair back before getting up. Will tries to stop him—he should at least offer to do the cleaning up—but he sways when he stands and sits back down immediately, heavily. Hannibal walks past him with all of their dirtied plates and flatware and cups efficiently stacked and balanced in one hand; he brushes his other hand over Will’s shoulder as he passes. “Too much coffee?” he asks.

“No,” Will answers, his voice sounding tinny in his ears. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

That Thursday Will shows up again, uninvited, and then the next Sunday, by unspoken invitation (or so he tells himself). Three courses for breakfast on Sundays is apparently (and unsurprisingly) the norm for Hannibal with planned or unplanned guests, and there are two coffee courses again. There’s a black, heavy-bodied cup to start; Hannibal fills a mug with an extravagantly tall pour from a tulip-shaped carafe and presses the mug into Will’s hand, his fingertips brushing the tender skin so thinly guarding tendon and bone and blood on the inside of Will’s wrist. Will shivers and nearly slops hot coffee on his hand. Hannibal pretends not to notice.

“Taste it first, before you add sugar,” he instructs. “This one’s best _unadulterated_.” He turns his back to pour his own mug and continues, “But I won’t object, of course, if you’d still like it sweetened.”

Hannibal watches while Will tastes, and Will tries to pretend the sensation of warmth in his cheeks is from the steam wafting up from the mug.

“It’s fine,” he mumbles, and Hannibal continues to stare, face impassive and unreadable. “I mean, it’s very good, of course,” Will finishes awkwardly, and he takes a too-large sip of still very hot coffee to emphasize his approval and then struggles not to choke and sputter. It burns his esophagus going down.

The third course of still-oven-warm currant-studded scones with chilled clotted cream is accompanied by an impossibly airy cappuccino and then by Hannibal reaching over to brush away a fleck of foam clinging to Will’s upper lip. For a second he looks about to lick the foam off his own fingertip, but then he wipes it on his (high thread count, glowing white) napkin instead.

So Sunday is the first routine fixture, along with an occasional weekday here and there, but then occasional swells to frequent, and frequent blooms into habit, three or four weekdays of five. They always eat together on Sundays—always three courses—but not weekdays. Weekdays it’s just coffee, at least two cups of it and the first almost always drunk in complete silence.

It’s a surprise, then, when Hannibal turns up at Will’s one morning, a large paper shopping bag in hand. Will answers the door in his shorts and T-shirt, still rubbing the hardly-slept out of his eyes and waiting for his brain to come online. Hannibal proceeds to the kitchen after giving the barest suggestion of a greeting, and Will follows dumbly, watching as Hannibal unpacks the shopping bag: there’s a countertop coffee grinder, a digital scale, a medium-sized vaguely hourglass-shaped glass carafe with a handle, a box of filter paper labeled “Chemex,” a goose-necked kettle, and a bag of coffee beans.

“What–?” Will finally manages.

“I’m going away for a conference, and I couldn’t bear the thought of you drinking whatever swill you drink when you’re not drinking my coffee. You’re going to learn how to make a good cup on your own.”

“I am?”

Hannibal stops for a second as he’s toweling off the carafe after having rinsed it under the tap; his hands still, and he fixes Will under his stare, as always Sphinx-like.

“Yeah,” Will agrees. “Okay. It’s…nice of you to teach me.”

Hannibal crosses to the sink and turns on the tap again, putting two fingers under the stream and then pulling them away and smelling them. He wrinkles his nose and flicks away the remaining drops. One lands on Will’s cheek.

“Bottled water?”

“Yeah, I think so.” Will rummages in his pantry.

“That’s the first rule of good coffee: start with good water. Coffee is mostly water, after all, if the water doesn’t taste good the coffee is guaranteed not to.”

Will hands Hannibal a bottle of water from his stash of emergency supplies and watches as Hannibal breaks the seal and upends the whole bottle into the small kettle. Hannibal starts the flame on the stove with a precise turn of his wrist, and he settles the kettle over it before moving back to the other supplies. He sets up the grinder, then opens the bag of beans and beckons Will over. He holds the bag under Will’s nose, keeping him close with a hand on his shoulder, and tells him to smell. Will inhales: the scent is rich and sweet with hints of Belgian chocolate and orange, or perhaps bergamot.

Hannibal’s hand slides from Will’s shoulder down the length of his arm, cupping his elbow briefly before taking up his hand, holding it palm up. He pours a few coffee beans into Will’s palm.

“Note the color. Chocolate brown. _Milk_ chocolate, that is, not dark bitter chocolate. Dark roasts have no subtlety, and, in fact, less caffeine. There is no advantage to them.”

Will clasps his fist around the beans as Hannibal abruptly lets go. He pours half the bag of beans into the hopper of the grinder and plugs it in.

“After water, the grind is the next most important thing. For these filters, start around here,” Hannibal says, adjusting a lever on a numbered scale. “You dial in the weight of the coffee you want ground in grams here.” He demonstrates by typing ‘44’ into the digital display on the front panel. “The proper ratio is about six grams per hundred of water. I trust you can remember that.”

“Of course,” Will answers.

Hannibal removes a filter from the box; it’s pre-folded into quarters, and he shapes it into a cone with three layers of paper forming one curved half and a single layer forming the other. He holds it by one corner and moves to the stove, where the kettle is starting to hiss before it screams.

“The filter needs to be rinsed before it’s used,” he explains, “to wash away any chemical or papery taste.”

As soon as the kettle whines and rumbles with a rolling boil, Hannibal takes it up and pours a spiral of water over the cone of paper from the outside in, top to bottom, narrowly missing his own fingers. He places the kettle back on the stove and fits the filter into the top, funnel-like portion of the hourglass carafe, then flicks off the flame on the stove before starting the grinder.

The grinder is loud as it works; Hannibal leans close to Will’s ear to say, “Get the kettle now.”

Will struggles against the temptation to press his spoken-into ear against his shoulder, to rub away the warm-breathed words, humid on his skin. He busies himself with the kettle instead, barely remembering to turn off the flame.

By the time Will gathers himself from the distraction of a strange fluttering low in his belly and turns back, Hannibal has the brewing apparatus ready to go on the table: the coffee grounds are in the filter, and the apparatus is set upon the scale, tared to zero. He gestures for Will to take the place in front of the apparatus, and Will steps forward obediently. Hannibal fits himself around Will from behind, covering Will’s hand on the kettle’s handle with his own and steadying them both with his other hand on Will’s hip.

“A gentle pour is the key,” he instructs from over Will’s shoulder, pressing with his hand over Will’s to tilt the kettle down until a thin stream of steaming water seems to hang straight down from the end of the gooseneck. With small, precisely-controlled wrist movements he guides Will to move the stream in tight circles, stopping just as soon as all the coffee has been wet. The hot water in contact with the freshly ground coffee produces some kind of gas-producing reaction: the wet grounds swell and bubble in places, and a golden foamy layer develops on the surface.

“This is the bloom,” Hannibal explains. “Just let it go for, oh–” he pauses, sliding his hand from Will’s hip over his stomach and then using the leverage of his arm around Will’s waist to draw their bodies tight together. “–a bit under a minute.” He turns his head, then, and presses his nose into the hair behind Will’s ear. He inhales. “You haven’t even used it yet today, but I can tell you haven’t changed your aftershave.”

Will tenses. “No, I–”

Hannibal cuts him off, rubbing his palm in short strokes up and down Will’s side as he speaks. “I didn’t tell you to change it for my own health, you realize, but for yours.” His words tumble into Will’s hair and graze his skin, and before Hannibal shifts his attention back to the brewing coffee, Will feels lips and the ghost of (sharp-edged) teeth closing around the tip of his ear.

But then Hannibal’s hand is guiding his again to dance in patient circles. Several minutes pass in near stillness, just their hands moving together. When the numbers on the scale pass just over seven hundred grams, Hannibal tilts the kettle back up and moves with Will to set it aside. His now free arm joins its opposite around Will’s middle, and despite the insistent shouting at the back of his mind that this is very _strange_ , maybe _terrifying_ , Will relaxes back into the embrace, letting Hannibal support his weight, letting his mind stay quiet (as it never is), letting his breathing fall into the same rhythm as that of the broad chest behind him.

It’s so still and peaceful that Will doesn’t remember it ending, later; he only remembers drinking the best cup of coffee he’s ever made, a cup savoring of chocolate and bergamot and an unidentifiable sharp, sweet—and, perhaps, _dangerous_ —spice.

**Author's Note:**

> [Double-walled glass espresso cups](http://www.amazon.com/Bodum-2-5-Ounce-Double-Wall-Glasses-Espresso/dp/B000A5CLG6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1368243444&sr=8-1&keywords=bodum+double-walled+espresso) are made by Bodum.
> 
> The perhaps-inaccurately-described "tulip-shaped carafe" is a [Cafe Solo](http://www.amazon.com/Eva-Solo-Coffee-Neoprene-1-Liter/dp/B00009OWEV/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1368374620&sr=8-1&keywords=cafe+solo) immersion brewing device, made by the Danish design company Eva Solo.
> 
> Hannibal buys for Will:
> 
> \- a [Baratza Vario-W grinder](http://www.amazon.com/Baratza-Vario-W-Coffee-Grinder-985/dp/B0058J1XMC/ref=sr_1_1?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1368243505&sr=1-1&keywords=baratza+vario+w), which is crazy top-of-the-line, but Hannibal seems to have the dough
> 
> \- a [Chemex brewer](http://www.amazon.com/Chemex-Glass-Coffee-Maker-Handle/dp/B0036YFTO4/ref=sr_1_6?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1368243557&sr=1-6&keywords=chemex), along with the [classic _bleached_ pre-folded Chemex filters](http://www.amazon.com/Chemex-Classic-Pre-folded-Filter-Squares/dp/B000N4W2SG/ref=pd_sim_hg_4)
> 
> \- the ubiquitous (in coffee circles, at least) [Hario gooseneck kettle](http://www.amazon.com/Hario-VKB-120HSV-Coffee-Kettle-Buono/dp/B000IGOXLS/ref=sr_1_1?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1368243731&sr=1-1&keywords=hario+gooseneck)
> 
> I imagine Hannibal probably brought beans he'd ordered from [Intelligentsia Coffee](http://www.intelligentsiacoffee.com/).


End file.
